Conceptualizing xenophobia as structural violence in the lives of refugee women in Gauteng, South Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the embeddedness of xenophobia in institutions through a theoretical but empirically under-researched concept of structural violence. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interview data with refugee women in Gauteng, South Africa, we explore the empirical utility of the concept of structural violence in shaping refugee women’s everyday experiences of xenophobia through three analytical themes: (a) unequal access to resources (b) constrained agency and (c) dehumanization. While keeping an empirical grip on experiential narratives on xenophobia, we draw attention to three public institutions that enhance the vulnerability of those already vulnerable: The Department of Home Affairs, The South African Police Service and Public Hospitals. Our paper elucidates how refugee women experience xenophobia and how they manage their “everyday” in these circumstances- an aspect that remains underdeveloped in existing research.

KEYWORDS:

• Structural violence
• xenophobia
• exploitation
• agency
• Kwerekwere
• dehumanization

Introduction

In 2008, there was an outburst of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, which started with mobs of South African nationals attacking foreign nationals in Johannesburg (see e.g. Apf 2008 and Silva 2008). The violence continued for several days and spread to other areas in the province as well as to other provinces (HRW 2009a), killing more than sixty and displacing thousands of people (Neocosmos 2008). The attacks were, however, neither the first nor the last episodes of xenophobic violence against foreign nationals in South Africa. In 2015, 2017 and 2019 xenophobic attacks spread around the country killing and displacing many, with the largest concentrated in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (Oatway and Skuy 2021; Richter and Botha 2020). Although the attacks got state officials as well as international actors to recognize and give attention to the problem of xenophobia in South Africa, attacks towards foreign nationals of African descent have continued. This is in itself paradoxical as the post-apartheid government has signed and ratified several international conventions on human rights including the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR), the Bill of Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Thus despite the transition from apartheid to the democratic “rainbow nation” in 1994, a “culture of violence and racism” prevails in South Africa (Harris 2001).

The word xenophobia comes from the Greek words xenos, meaning both “the stranger” and “the guest”, and phobos, meaning “fear”. Strictly speaking xenophobia, then, means “fear of the stranger”, but it usually implies “hatred of strangers” (Wicker 2001) or what appears as “foreign”. It has been argued that the language and discourse of xenophobia is an experience shared by people who (a) move internally (rural to urban areas) within South Africa; (b) those who appear or are constructed as being from “elsewhere” because of their distinctive language and (c) those born in countries besides South Africa (Naicker 2016). Nonetheless Naicker (2016) points out, these categories are not stable and “who is included and who is excluded and the basis on which these distinctions are made is often changing depending on the political needs of the State” (Naicker 2016, 4). In South Africa, xenophobia is particularly directed towards black (im)migrants and asylum seekers/refugees from other African countries (Warner, Finchilescu, and Finchelescu et al. 2003).

Existing research has explained the causes of xenophobic violence in South Africa (Dodson 2010; Gordon 2017; Everatt 2011; Solomon and Kosaka 2013; Crush 2008; Solomon 2019; Tella 2016) including how institutions are implicated (Zihindula, Meyer-Weitz, and Akintola 2017; Crush and Tawodzera 2014; Musuva 2015). Three dominant themes explain the reasons for xenophobia in South Africa: isolation, scapegoating and biocultural hypotheses (Tella 2016; Harris 2002). The three themes are not mutually exclusive but provide different perspectives The isolation theory describes how the apartheid state excluded black South Africans from politics and urban centres by categorizing them as “surplus people”. Black people became aliens who were allowed in the towns if they were useful, for example, to build the city, take care of white children, clean the pools and maintain gardens (Landau 2010). This legacy continues as economic systems that are supported through market liberalization and economic globalization often rely on cheap and precarious labour, thus further engraining existing inequalities (Kothari and Harcourt 2004). Apartheid contributed to learned behaviours and attitudes of hatred and fear based on race, class and gender (Sigsworth 2008). This is well illustrated in James Clellands’ novel Deeper Than Colour (2010, 21), where the main character Angus Smith, a cynical architect in Johannesburg, states: We were taught to hate. It’s hard to stop. The racial techniques and classifications, which were used to distinguish whites from non-whites during apartheid, have reconfigured to differentiate between black nationals and black non-nationals in post-apartheid South Africa (Greenburg 2010; Gibson 2011). This “black racism” (Harris 2001) is a reflection of the unequal socio-economic and political structures in post-Apartheid South Africa. The scapegoating hypothesis focuses on how black South Africans tend to blame im(migrants) for their misfortune (Tella 2016). Although a small black elite today can wallow in the conspicuous consumption of fancy cars and houses, most ordinary black South Africans are still trapped in shacks, unemployment, poverty and the “illusion of citizenship” (Nyamnjoh 2006, 17). In fact, Abdi (2011) has argued that unless the political, social and economic rights of the local South Africans are not protected, the situation for newcomers will not improve. Poor, black South Africans see “foreign” Africans as competition for jobs, housing and other resources (Dodson 2010). Wimmer (1997), understands xenophobia as the struggle for the collective goods of the state. Furthermore, when exploring gendered patterns, Sigsworth et al. (2008) found that a general cause of xenophobia towards foreign African women in South Africa is competition for resources. Finally, the biocultural hypothesis emphasizes that the cause of xenophobia is based on South Africans differentiating themselves from other Africans. According to Neocosmos (2010) there is a discourse of exceptionalism in South Africa which builds on the idea that South Africa is not really a part of Africa with South Africans seen to show a preference for immigrants from Europe and North America, over and above those from Africa (Gordon 2015; Akinola 2018). Arguably, xenophobia in South Africa is racialized with south Africans harbouring different attitudes towards “foreigners” coming from Southern, East and West Africa (Warner, Finchilescu, and Finchelescu 2003).

An aspect that surfaces in this thematic delineation is the progressive institutionalization of xenophobia in the South African society (Crush and Tawodzera 2014). Neocosmos (2008, 588–599) argues that

government departments, parliamentarians, the police, the Lindela Detention Centre, and the law itself have all been reinforcing a one-way message since the 1990s: we are being invaded by illegal immigrants who are a threat to national stability, the RDP, development, our social services, and the very fabric of our society. African migrants are fair game for those with power (…) to use in making a fast buck. (…).

Thus even though state institutions do not condone violence against migrants, they “have provided an environment wherein such xenophobic violence has effectively been legitimized by the state”. In our analysis, we highlight the embeddedness of xenophobia in institutions through a theoretical but empirically under-researched concept of structural violence, the violence that is built into the “structure” and results in unequal power and unequal life chances (Galtung 1969, 171). Thus “[i]n order to see violence, one must see the structures” (Price 2012, 6). The violence is considered structural because “it is impossible to identify a single actor who commits the violence” Gupta (2012, 20). Instead, the violence is often embedded in long-standing “ubiquitous social structures” that are normalized by stable institutions (Gilligan 1996; Prontzos 2004), leading to the embeddedness of structural inequalities (Richter 2015).

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interview data with refugee women in Gauteng, South Africa, we explore the empirical utility of the concept of structural violence in shaping refugee women’s everyday experiences of xenophobia through three analytical themes: (a) unequal access to resources (b) constrained agency and (c) dehumanization. We explore these mechanisms through their interactions and intersections with three public institutions and their role in generating and nurturing xenophobia: The Department of Home Affairs, The South African Police Service and Public Hospitals.

Method

This study focuses on a group that we argue is one of the most vulnerable to structural violence – African refugee women. Although migration can provide a vital source of income for migrant women and their families and earn them greater autonomy, women who flee, risk facing stigma and discrimination at every stage of the migration cycle (Jolly and Reeves 2005). Female refugees are moreover vulnerable to intersectional forms of oppression based on racism, sexism, poverty, ethnicity and citizenship. Because of the sensitive nature of the subject and difficulty in recruitment, we used a multi-pronged methodology comprising in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with refugee women, observations and consultations with experts. Before conducting interviews with refugee women, we consulted six experts working with vulnerable refugees in South Africa to get an overview of the situation for refugee women in South Africa. These informants were chosen based on their expertise and work experience and included representatives from the United National High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Institute for Women’s and Gender studies at Pretoria University, the Consortium for Refugees and Migrations in South Africa and the local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) the Jesuit Refugee Service South Africa and Future Families. In total, interviews with 19 refugee women, living in Gauteng with experience of xenophobia, were conducted. Gauteng, which includes the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria is the largest province in South Africa and has experienced numerous xenophobic attacks in the last decades, including the 2008 attack. It has a population of approximately 15.5 million people – 26 per cent of the total population in the country – Gauteng. Gauteng is the province in South Africa with the highest percentage of people born outside of South Africa at 47.5 per cent (Statistics South Africa 2018). Since the collapse of apartheid in 1994, South African cities have become some of the most important destinations for African war refugees and economic migrants, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia and Zimbabwe (Greenburg 2010). With an average age of 30, women respondents were between the ages of 25 and 46. The majority of the women were unemployed, had no income or higher education but, three of them had a university degree. Half of the respondents were single mothers. Their country of origin included Somalia, Burundi, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Seventeen individual in-depth interviews were performed, and six women participated in a focus group interview, four of whom had been interviewed individually earlier. Confidentiality and anonymity were assured to all respondents so that fears of any sensitive information being forwarded to officials could be prevented (McCracken, Pretty, and Conway 1988). Since refugees are difficult to reach, snowball sampling was identified as the most appropriate method to locate respondents (Bryman 2006). Although most of the women in the study had received refugee status some of them were still waiting for a decision on their application for asylum. The focus group interview was conducted to gain a better understanding on how the respondents reflect and reason about xenophobia in a situation where they are sharing and comparing views and/or experiences (Greeff 2005). The participants in the focus group interview all shared the same country of origin, Somalia, Somalis being the main refugee group in South Africa (UNHCR 2015). The interview was conducted in Arabic with an interpreter. Since all women spoke the same language, they did not feel the need to explain themselves and instead could focus on the discussion (Greeff in de Vos et al. 2005). To get as rich data as possible, we also used the approach of observations to understand the local conditions, problems and opportunities (McCracken, Pretty, and Conway 1988). Hence, the observations and consultations with experts provided additional sources of information and allowed us to triangulate the information collected through the interviews with the refugee women (Strydom and Venter 2005). Since xenophobia is a sensitive topic, informed consent was obtained from all respondents. In line with international research ethics guidelines,¹ it was important that confidentiality was assured, and anonymity was offered to all respondents so that fear of any sensitive information being forwarded to officials could be prevented (McCracken, Pretty, and Conway 1988).

Unequal access to resources

Even though South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions today – globally –the social reality for many people living in South Africa is different. Respondents encountered barriers to claim their rights and the opportunities that come with it and have systematically been shunted out of the system. These exclusions are normalized within a system that characterizes refugees as an excluded section of the population. As argued by Fassin, Wilhelm-Solomon, and Segatti (2017, 163),

[t]his limbo epitomizes the profound ambivalence of the South African state, which acknowledges the right to protection but hinders access to it, which tolerates the presence of hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge but submits them to continual police interrogation and harassment.

Unequal “government access” is a singular issue, identified by respondents. One of the experts, the former Director at the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants (CORMSA) in South Africa, stated, that while in policy documents the government is speaking about “democracy”, “African unity” and “the need to address xenophobia”, state institutions are unwelcoming to non-nationals. It is for example routine to renew the identification papers at the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), as well as apply for permanent residence after being registered for five years on a refugee status permit (South African Government 2022). Permanent residence enables refugees to apply for a South African Identity Document (ID). Many respondents explain that DHA are refusing to issue new papers, unless the respondents pay them between R2,000 and 4,000. A respondent, Nasteho explains:

The xenophobia in South Africa is getting worse. When I went to Home Affairs. After five years you have the right to ask for status, this is normal procedure. When I go there they ask me for money. You have to pay money to get ID. You have to pay money to get anything in Home Affairs. When I went for my status they say, you give me R4000 and I give you your papers. It is illegal, but it is what is happening.

Furthermore, nearly all respondents have experienced being stopped and questioned by the police on the streets who wished to check their identification papers and also happen to ask for bribe money. Although the respondents’ refugee documents permit them to work, get a decent salary and claim labour rights, employers will not hire them without a South African ID. Lack of identity papers poses an obstacle to attaining a sustainable livelihood. Thus, they survive by doing low-paid, piece jobs or temporary jobs in the informal economy.

Many foreigners work in the streets. They cut hair, they sell cigarettes, sweet potatoes. That is their job, because they can’t get other jobs without a South African ID. (Nouvelle)

However, Operation Fiela – Reclaim launched by the South African government, arguably, to eliminate supposed criminality, became a tool to “clean the streets” of foreigners, for political expediency. Thus, it rendered those struggling to survive more vulnerable to “the violence of hunger, exclusion and marginality” (Scheper-Hughes 1992, 16).

Two of my sisters, they were selling in the streets. Now they are not selling anymore. Because the government said they want to clean the streets. If I go and ask for a job they will ask me for ID, and where can I get an ID. I can’t open an account with my papers. So, when the government is removing them, where are they supposed to go? The government is responsible for killing people, not killing people directly, but with hunger. (Nouvelle)

Before, we could sell on the streets. But now the municipality refuses to let people sell. Before, people sell things everywhere. They want to get income, and most important in human life is income. Now, if you don’t have that income, how are you going to sustain yourself? (Nasteho)

States, the supposed guarantors of the rights of citizens, in many instances have been the principal violators of human rights and have systematically reproduced inequalities. Gupta (2012, 5) argues that “extreme poverty should be theorized as a direct and culpable form of killing made possible by state policies and practices rather than as an inevitable situation in which the poor are merely ‘allowed to die’”. Similarly, these afflictions as Farmer (2003) argues are not the result of accident or a force but consequences of human decisions- where state functionaries are “responsible for killing people, … not directly, but with hunger” as Nouvelle states in the quote above.

Many of the respondents have been dependent on local NGOs for paying rent or buying food. This is, however, not a long-term solution since the NGOs usually can help them out for a maximum of three months. Thus, many of the women in this study have already received all the economic help they can from the local NGOs and are now on their own. The fact that the respondents do not have enough money to pay for food, rent or transport enhances their vulnerability (Farmer 2004; Kleinman 2000) to being attacked, robbed and even raped on the streets. This is likely to happen when they walk home from work, something they are forced to do since the low salaries do not allow them to pay for public transport. Thus, social and government policies “engender a kind of structural violence that is normalized and accepted as part of the ‘status quo’ but that is experienced as injustice and brutality at particular intersections of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, gender and age” (Anglin 1998, 145–146).

Coupled with economic vulnerability is the lack of safe and adequate housing. Although refugees have the right to housing, there is no government system to accommodate refugees in South Africa, who formally lack refugee camps. Though some of the respondents were homeless at the time of the interviews, they were able to get some kind of accommodation but with its own share of difficulties. Most of them shared an apartment with other non-nationals, in “communes”, with a separate sleeping area but shared utilities. Respondents considered areas commonly known as townships or “locations” as unsafe and preferred to stay in the city despite the high rent for housing coupled with lack of waged labour. Townships are separate areas that were created for black South Africans, during apartheid. The extreme inequalities between white and black South Africans that apartheid created can still be witnessed in many townships where poverty, unemployment and food-insecurity are prevalent (Mudau and Mahlatsi 2022). According to the World Bank (2018) 25.6 per cent of the South African urban population live in townships. A common perception, amongst the respondents, is that the city housed different nationalities compared to the townships which were homogenous and dangerous, with black South Africans in majority. This is a fear that is justified as many of the xenophobic attacks have taken place in townships. Abdi states that (2011, 693)

while it might be true that all South Africans are prejudiced against African migrants, violence against the migrants and the location where these attacks occur remain specific. Rarely are migrants and refugees killed in rich suburban areas in South Africa, nor do white citizens and white migrants seek their livelihoods in townships and informal settlements and thus become victims.

Some respondents narrated how they had been chased away from their houses or harassed by neighbours and landlords in the townships because they are non-nationals:

I am staying where I am staying because rent is cheaper, and I can’t manage to pay more. But I am not safe there, I know that. It is better to be mixed, so that you can help each other if they are attacking foreigners, you can tell each other to start running. (Nouvelle)

Although the respondents experience the city as safer than the townships, they also share experiences of how unsafe and inadequate housing situations in the city have led to violence, directed towards them and their children. Ghislaine explains that when the NGO couldn’t give them money for rent anymore, her family had to split and stay at two different shelters, a men’s, and a women’s shelter. One night, her son got raped at the men’s shelter. Similarly, another respondent, Esther, explains how the lack of safe housing led to an incident of sexual violence in the commune, where she lives.

I go to report to that man, at the shelter. They send me to police station.

The first question the police asked me: “That man that raped your son, he was from where?”

I said: “He is from here, South Africa”

“So you want the case number?”

I say yes

“OK, come tomorrow”

Tomorrow “come tomorrow”, tomorrow “Come tomorrow” up and down, two times a day. Morning, afternoon I was going there. Until now the police didn’t give me a case number. (Ghislaine)

We have three rooms in our apartment and one toilet. The girl that I share a room with, she was raped by one of the guys that stay there. (Esther)

The stories illustrate the intersectional vulnerabilities of gender, lack of citizenship and ethnicity, which create risk for most forms of extreme suffering. When assistance is sought by government authorities, the approach adopted is problematic. Earlier studies have illustrated an unwillingness of government functionaries, such as the police, civil servants at home affairs and health care staff to protect and assist refugees (Musuva 2015; Zihindula, Meyer-Weitz, and Akintola 2017; Crush and Tawodzera 2014). In fact, a xenophobic rhetoric by state officials legitimizes violence (Neocosmos 2008, 587) and violates the lives of refugees even further. For example, following a break-in in their homes, and if the accused is at place when the police arrive, the police usually start talking to them in a South African language that the women do not understand. If the accused is not there when the police arrive, the police ask the women where the accused person is from, following which, the general response of the police, according to the respondents is “They are citizens, unlike you, so there is nothing you can do”. As argued by Neocosmos (2008, 588) “The police are particularly notorious, using their powers to avoid intervening to help foreign migrants when attacked by criminals, by raiding and beating up migrants in their sanctuaries, by tearing up official documents.” Thus

[h]uman- engineered institutions such as the police, which are supposed to protect and shield people from threats, become, in themselves a cause for human insecurity. (…) rather than seeing institutions, processes, and structures as part of the solution, they can also be part of the problem. (Roberts 2008, 21; Winter and Leighton 2001)

Institutional medical xenophobia moreover contributes to unequal health care delivery for refugees (Zihindula, Meyer-Weitz, and Akintola 2017; Crush and Tawodzera 2014) and makes the respondents highly vulnerable to infectious diseases, such as HIV, but also other kinds of morbidities (Farmer 2004; Kleinman 2000). Poverty and hunger feed into other problems which threaten livelihoods, as explained by Brigitte who, sometimes, cannot take her antiretroviral treatment because she cannot afford food.

I can’t take the medicine for my HIV because sometimes I have not eaten enough. I feel drunk if I take it without eaten. So, I do not take it. (Brigitte)

It is well established that poor people tend to not only have less access to healthcare but are also more susceptible to disease overall (Farmer et al. 2006). Nonetheless, the cyclical nature of poverty and illness is worth highlighting here as those who are not poor are perhaps “one illness away” from falling into poverty as they become indebted due to the burdensome and unjust health care costs (Krishna 2010). Reframing illness and disease means understanding not only its biosocial origins but how it is actively produced and re-inforced by social structures (Farmer et al. 2006). Previous research (see, e.g. Ataguba, Day, and McIntyre 2015; Omotoso and Koch 2018; Fassin, Wilhelm-Solomon, and Segatti 2017) points to the wide inequalities in the distribution of health in South Africa – shaped by income, employment, education, race, social protection and housing. Refugee women are in many cases influenced by all these factors; the majority of the respondents in this paper have no or low incomes, are unemployed, lack human capital, are black, lack safe housing and social protection. Thus, refugee women often have a stronger need of health care than the general population. Many of the respondents interviewed in this study were sick. They had tumours, problems walking, coughing, pain from giving birth, HIV, huge scars and pain from being attacked and raped. Several of them also explained how they suffered from stress and “bad thoughts”. In some cases, the disease came from violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) that the respondents had experienced during their migration or during civil conflict in their country of origin. In other cases, migrant women were vulnerable to SGBV because of the risks involved in informal cross-border travel, fear of reporting to the authorities and lack of knowledge of their rights (HRW 2009b). Although the women interviewed in this study had the right to health care, xenophobia prevented them from getting the right treatment and medicine.

In the hospital, when they speak to me about HIV – how to treat it, “you have to do this, etc.” they speak in their language. So, you don’t understand. Even if I tell them, I don’t understand and ask them to speak in English they say a few words and then they go back to speaking their language. People can die because they don’t know how to take their tablets. (Nouvelle)

At the hospitals and clinics, even the ability to speak English does not help the respondents to receive health care, as the nurses and people working in the reception often speak to them in South African languages such as Zulu or Sotho.

I am trying Zulu. Because if you go to the hospital you are supposed to speak Zulu. If you are speaking Zulu, they are supposed to come and help you. If you are not speaking their language, they can’t help you. (Esther)

In most cases, they do not get assistance. Instead, they are told to sit down and wait, to come back another day, ignored or told that the hospital does not have the medicine that they need.

You get an appointment, but then you still need to wait the whole day. And then they close and say, come tomorrow. You wait and wait. Sometimes you go home without having taken the treatment. (Brigitte)

Richter argues, that institutionalized xenophobia in combination with a failure to enforce healthcare access rights has led to suffering amongst forced migrant women in South Africa (2015, 153). Violations of rights are thus not accidents random in its distribution or effect. Rather, they are symptoms of deeper pathologies of power that are linked to social conditions which determine who will suffer abuse and who will be protected from harm (Farmer 2003). A situation is aggravated if the person who has low income also has low health, low education and little power- as is the case with most of our respondents. These different rank dimensions tend to be heavily correlated due to the way they are tied together in the social structure (Galtung 1969). In fact, social structures and social action share an interdependent relationship. In other words, structure is realized only through social action, and social action requires structure as its condition. In this context, attitudes, conduct, speech and medical behaviour constitute the social action which is upheld by the wider matrix of power, privilege and knowledge that medical professionals embody. Furthermore, the most vulnerable people are not only excluded by the welfare institutions, but they also stay away from them due to fear and experiences of institutional discrimination (Konczal and Varga 2012). Institutions can come to nurture environments where medical staff view certain practices and relationships as part of a “normal” medical routine and with time these practices (perceived as disempowering by patients) are embedded in the culture of the hospital. The respondents describe that they are often questioned why they come there in the first place and told that they should go back to their country of origin to receive health care there. In her studies of undocumented female migrants in South Africa and the United States, Richter illustrates how xenophobic medical staffs deny and obstruct lifesaving emergency healthcare for these groups. In these “authorized transgressions” (Bakhtin 1984), some providers of care can also violate the trust bequeathed to their position by providing inadequate medical attention.

At hospitals – if you are a foreigner, make sure pay R5000 to deliver a child – we are no longer doing it for free for foreigners. What is that - that is part of xenophobia. I don’t know how they try to put it; they try to color it but it’s still xenophobia. (Francine)

One of the respondents was seven months pregnant. Yohana had obvious pains: she was limping, skinny and coughing constantly throughout the interview. She explained that when she visits the hospitals, the health staff say there is nothing they can do, and they give her Panadol. At the same time, Yohana mentioned that one doctor told her that the child is not developing well because of her suffering. A representative from the local NGO, Future Families where the interview with Yohana was conducted explain that their office has tried to help her by writing letters to the hospitals, but to no avail. The respondents describe that the xenophobic treatment in the public hospitals has led to them not going back there when they or their children get sick the next time. Deeqa describes that instead of seeking health care she drinks hot water and eats Panadol. As medical anthropologists, such as Das, Farmer and Scheper-Hughes, argue, in relation to their research in India, Haiti and Brazil, respectively: “social forces and processes come to be embodied as biological events” (Farmer 1999, 5) by different societies which creates different legacies in health and disease and how and who suffers (Das 2000). Similarly, Scheper-Hughes (1992) shows that in Brazil “everyday” structural and political violence are enacted on bodies, whereby people suffer and die from preventable conditions. She draws on the work of Franco Basaglia, a radical Italian psychiatrist, to extend the powerful metaphor of “invisible genocide”, which is invisible not because they are hidden, but, precisely the opposite, they are hardest to perceive because they are right before our eyes. Yet, its effects can be seen on the lives of people. This invisibility also hides what Arendt (1963) describes as the “banality of evil” whereby supposed normal, decent people become “technicians of genocide”, in particular social and historical contexts. Thus, in drawing links between “war crimes” and peace-time crimes’, Basaglia (1987) argues that “ordinary” people could practice torture, terror and “genocidal practices”, especially in a culture where institutional inefficiency and indifference pervade. This violence is conducted in the normative social spaces of schools, clinics, streets, courtrooms, prisons, youth detention centres and in public morgues, leading to death, injury, illness, subjugation, stigmatization and psychological terror (Farmer 2004).

Constrained agency

The most obvious effect of xenophobia; is that it constrains agency to the extent that fundamental human needs are unattainable (Ho 2007). The potential agency of women in this study is held back by the conditions of a specific relationship and by the uneven distribution of power and resources (Galtung 1969) such as income, education, medical services, food and shelters (Köhler and Alcock 1976). The lack of orientation programmes or policies to support refugees disables them “to define their own life-choices and to pursue their own goals” (Kabeer 1999, 438), experiencing a very limited space to act (Anglin 1998; Ho 2007). The respondents argue that the government should show refugees where and how they can access their rights so that they can sleep, get food, health care and work.

Most of the problems come from the government. They don’t like to give chances to refugees. How can a person who never been in this country just receive a document and carry on his life. It’s difficult. They must organize life orientation. How the country offices are operating. (Nasteho)

The government must look at their policies. By signing that Geneva Convention of refugees they were supposed to see how other countries are doing for women and kids. They are supposed to also implement that in South Africa. Because to give us free papers yes, it’s fine. But you give someone a paper and you don’t teach him how to fish. (Francine)

At times, an individual or group internalizes the norms and values perpetuated by dominant groups that legitimizes his/her subordination. These processes of internalization produce paralysis and powerlessness amongst vulnerable populations who are forced into complicity with the very social forces that are poised, intentionally or not, to destroy them (Scheper-Hughes 2004). Thus, (…) violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations (Galtung 1969, 168). This is most apparent in the ways in which women respondents have developed strategies to hide themselves or make themselves invisible with the aim of not getting discriminated against, specifically through features that would reveal the respondents as foreigners/non-nationals, such as clothing and language. In her research on Ndebele and Shona-speaking Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, Siziba (2014, 2016) argues that immigrants efface their own ethnolinguistic identities in order to align themselves with local (black)South Africans- negotiating regimes of (ab)normalization in South Africa-

how through approximation of the “legitimate” appearance, the body is (re)decorated, (re)deployed, (re)styled, and (re)constructed for the interlocutors’ gaze. This adorning of a social mask and the consequent passing as normal through the display of the appropriate body and bodily hexis is complemented by a tactical maintenance of linguistic distance. (Siziba 2016, 122)

Lucy lives in the location but has learned how to speak the South African languages. She hides that she is from Zimbabwe because she is afraid South African people will threaten her. Her neighbours do not know that she is not a South African citizen “If they complain about foreigners, I just laugh. If I talk, they might notice in my tone I am not South Africa”.

I avoid talking in public and make sure I have something to read. (Wivine)

Hence, many non-nationals live in terror that their accents might be detected in public (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001). As the coloured couple “the Campbell’s” in Zoë Wicomb’s novel Playing in the Light (2006) who try to hide their “thick r’s” to pass as “white” during apartheid refugees today tries to hide their native background. The Campbell family can never relax and are always worried about getting caught and, consequently, being forced to leave behind all the privileges that the life as a “white” person brings.

Playing – as others would call it – in the light left no space, no time for interiority, for reflecting what they had done. Under the glaring spotlight of whiteness, they played diligently, assiduously; the past, and with it, conscience, shrunk to a black dot in the distance. (…). Playing in the light? Perhaps not, Marion thinks. More like hiding – hiding in the light. (Wicomb 2006, 123–124)

The hiding by the Campbell’s and the respondents is a strategy to avoid being discriminated against, and not about rejecting their own origin and identity (Hankela 2020).

The stories of constrained agency amongst the women are endless; from cooking in the dark so that the neighbours will not notice that they are at home, not fighting back when their boss or landlord is harassing them, not leaving the house unless they have to go to work, making sure to have something to read when they are in public as a safety that no one will start talking to them, disguising that they are foreigners by always have the exact amount in the taxis and shops so that they do not have to ask for change, or, if their phone rings they don’t pick it up since the language could reveal them, they avoid wearing traditional clothes (such as their hijab) and, avoiding to report crime perpetrated against them.

We look different. We attract more – they can find us quickly. Even when I was in the locations, I used to remove my clothes so that people would not pick up me quickly. (Ibado)

I am a Somalian., you know the way we are dressed. Immediately they know we don’t belong to them. They know this before I even talk. I want them to see me as other women- as South Africans. (Nasteho)

The narratives suggest that the constant fear of being discriminated against paralyzes the women, and their voices are silenced (Galtung 1969). As NoViolet Bulawayo in her novel “We need new names” (2013, 240) states:

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own language, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues trashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside, trapped.

Or as the respondent Brigitte says:

When they tell me to go home, I just keep quiet.

During the focus group interview, the respondents keep coming back to how their position as refugees is further constrained because they are women. In the role as mothers, they are responsible for taking care of the children and hence more in contact with schools, hospitals and other public institutions. The former Director of CORMSA, argues that women are more exposed to institutional xenophobia while men are more exposed to the direct violence.

Personally, having observed, working in the human rights sector for a very long time, the multiple roles that women play, sometimes you are the head of the family, you are the mother, and then you are working, all those dynamics, and then you have these added challenges, you want to access health, send your children to school.

The respondents explained that as mothers they can never leave their children. Instead, they must pay the bills, school fees and keep on fighting with hospitals and schools to obtain their’s and their children’s rights. In their role as provider and caretaker, the respondents argue that they are the most vulnerable group of refugees. These narratives illustrate that women and men may experience structural violence differently - shaped by their social position and location.

Dehumanization

The identification of the black foreigner as the undesirable “other” is encapsulated in the pejorative xenophobic terminology of Makwerekwere, or Kwerekwere, a Sesotho word meaning limited competence, thus implying an inadequate capacity to interact with native society. Thus, those identified as Kwerekwere do not fit with the South African identity narrative. In fact, the attempt to form a national identity after apartheid has given rise to a discourse that focuses on who is not South African (Croucher 1998). Furthermore, a Kwerekwere country is, in general, associated with civil wars, genocides, AIDS, dictatorships, corruption and crime (Nyamnjoh 2006), which forces people to migrate to SA in the hope of new beginnings. Calling non-nationals, Kwerekwere reduces the refugee women, in this study, into expendable non-humans (Scheper-Hughes 2004) captured by expressions such as “see me like nothing”, “no human value” and “not a human being” by our respondents. The refugee experience of xenophobic harassments and name-calling are reminiscent of the stigmatization and psychological terror that Farmer (2004) points to as one consequence of structural violence.

The word Kwerekwere is often used in a sentence together with threats such as “Go home”. Common accusations associated with Kwerekwere are appropriating economic capital and prosperity that rightly belongs to South Africans only. As McKnight (2008, 22) puts it, “[i]t is seen as a purely opportunistic move on the part of foreigners to ‘steal’ the scarce resources only recently made available to black South Africans since the introduction of equality”.

Besides offences against human dignity, respondents were, at times, subjected to direct xenophobic violence. Almost all respondents express that they are living in constant fear of themselves or their children becoming victims of some sort of direct violence. As mentioned earlier, many of the respondents have experiences of SGBV in their countries of origin and some, furthermore, have been victims to SGBV a second or a third time in South Africa, a country with recorded high levels of SGBV (HRW 2021). Therefore, some of them compare the situation “at home” with their situation in South Africa, as of being in a state of war. But when violence is done against those who are considered as “inhuman” or “unreal”, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated (Butler 2004).

It’s not easy, you just reach a country that you don’t know anything about. You start getting new names – “Kwerekwere”, “Grigamba”, “Refugee”, all these names I did not know them. But for me it was a first shock. I came here to look for peace, but you people are tormenting me so it’s better I die. But I will fight for you to stop calling us names. (Francine)

We are like animals. Maybe not even animals. We don’t resist. Even animals you can look after sometimes. We are just foreigners. (Lucy)

The silencing of suffering casts sufferers out of the public’s moral community, it “muffles” suffering, renders it barely noticeable (Morris 1997; Opotow 2001), and changes the moral colour of the act from red to orange or green (Galtung 1969). Farmer (1996, 274) refers to this as a “multi-axial model of suffering” where a simultaneous consideration of various social “axes” is imperative in efforts to discern a political economy of brutality. The suffering inflicted by structural violence is often silenced so as to quash opposition. The texture of dire affliction is best felt in the gritty details of biography (Farmer 1996, 263). The constant insults and harassments are described as affecting both the mind and the body of the respondents. They explain that they feel pain both physically and mentally. They have started to vomit, and their hair is falling off. The respondent Nasteho describes South Africa as a very violent country, not only because of the killing but also because of the emotional pain people are giving to each other. The dehumanization affects the physical but especially the psychological health of its victims. The pressure and stress are evident in their narratives.

If someone hates me, or get angry sometimes, I feel my whole body is sick. Sometimes if someone can hate you it touches my heart and I feel my whole body is painful. Here we don’t have value. They don’t consider us as human beings. (Wivine)

All respondents express that they feel ignored, forgotten and “valueless” in the South African society. They furthermore argue that since they are regarded as non-humans, no one pays attention to them, they feel as if they did not have a voice in society, as if no one stood up for them. This illustrates how the dehumanization transforms refugees as the “human waste of the global frontier land” (Bauman 2013). As in the novel Things my mother left me by Pulane Mlilio Mpundo (2022)

The child cries hysterically. He won’t be calmed. A nappy was requested from the sergeant at the front desk, but that was an hour ago and has produces no result. We all know it is because his mother is a kwerekwere, a foreigner. Even an orphan village girl like me knows that makwerekwere have no rights here, not in South Africa, and neither do their children, especially not in police station holding cells.

Or as described by the respondent Ghislaine:

I cry, cry, run into the police station. There is nothing that the police do. It’s apartheid. When Congolese come and cry about something wrong, they can’t hear you.

As argued earlier, there is systemic lack of intervention by the functionaries of the State as they choose to overlook xenophobia’s defilement and negation of humanity. In an illustration, Phaswane Mpe in Welcome to our Hillbrow (2001) writes

No one seemed to care that the treatment of Makwerekwere by the police, and the lack of sympathy from the influential Department of Home affairs, ran contrary to the human rights clauses detailed in the new constitution of the country … Ambiguities, paradoxes, ironies … the stuff of our South African and Makwerekwere lives.

The respondents describe how their experiences of being excluded from the South African society and its public institutions has caused them to feel homeless – a feeling enhanced through their statelessness. As the respondent Hodan states: “My things are still in my suitcase. I am homeless – since 25 years.”

In line with the work of Hartley and Fleay (2017) the dehumanization of the respondents in this paper is to some extent negotiated by the respondents referring to themselves as humans deserving rights. Thus, there is a simultaneous struggle to recover their lost humanity.

I know I have rights, but the question is if they are willing to give me my rights. They violate my rights to be a human being, to be the same as the others. If they give me right to work and integrate I will, but they don’t. (Ibado)

The state institutions’ complicity to nurture certain practices and relationships as “the norm” and how over time these practices become embedded in society, justifying all kinds of violence(s) (also see Unnithan and Whitt 1992).

Concluding remarks

Our attempt in this article is to understand the embeddedness of xenophobia in institutions and the ways in which these structural inequalities inform and shape the everyday experiences and lives of refugee women. While keeping an empirical grip on experiential narratives on xenophobia, we draw attention to the macro structures that shape everyday experiences of violence for refugee women. Three main ideas associated with structural violence are identified: unequal access to resources, constrained agency and dehumanization. We are not arguing that every refugee woman living in Gauteng experiences the same vulnerabilities as the women in this study. However, little in these stories is unique. The structural barriers that Muna, Brigitte, Esther, Wivine and the other women in this study meet, highlight forces that constrain the life of many refugee women, even beyond South Africa. To approach an end to these violations, we need to identify the forces that create structural violence, and critically assess the structures that keep some people on the margins.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This material for this article was collected through a Minor Field Study (MFS) scholarship, which was granted by the Department of Government, Uppsala Sweden in 2013. The research proposal was developed in consultation with the appointed advisor (the second author of this article). Following this, the MFS application was reviewed and approved by the Department Committee as conforming to principles of research ethics: protecting the participants personal integrity; not exposing people to harm and abiding to basic rules of research integrity. At the time of the MFS, scholarship there was no formal ethics committee at the Department of Government, Uppsala University.